Access the Pupil attendance and absence in schools in England: data dashboard (opens in a new tab) here
The latest data relates to the week commencing 12 December 2022 and is available in the pupil attendance dashboard (opens in a new tab). This is the most recent week in which all schools were expected to be open. Local authority level estimates covering the week commencing 19 December 2022, can be found in the “Explore data and files” section of this page where pupils were still in attendance in that local authority. Only 6 local authorities were still open in the week commencing 19 December 2022. Data is collected on a daily basis and data for the interim weeks between publications is included in year-to-date figures and is available on a daily and weekly basis in the underlying data available on this page (see “Explore data and files”).
The dashboard displays attendance and absence headline figures, and reasons for absence at national, regional and local authority geographic levels. Data is available across primary, secondary and special schools and can be broken down by individual school type.
Attendance rates
The data shows that the attendance rate across the week for all schools was 85.7%, giving an overall absence rate of 14.3%. The attendance rate varied across the week with a peak of 87.0% on Wednesday, before a decline to 83.1% on Friday. The decrease in attendance on a Friday is in line with weekly patterns in historical data. Due to the end of term, data may be subject to additional settling, in particular between absence reasons where these may not be known until after the winter break.
By school type, the attendance rate across the week was:
- 87.6% in state-funded primary schools
- 83.4% in state-funded secondary schools
- 79.3% in state-funded special schools
Absence rates
The increase in the absence rate has been driven by illness absence, which during week commencing 12 December 2022 was 9.1%, up from 7.5% in the previous week and 2.6% at the start of term. This is in line with recent increases in rates of seasonal flu and other seasonal respiratory illnesses (opens in a new tab).
Overall absence has increased the most in secondary schools (from 6.4% at the start of term to 16.6%) followed by special schools (from 10.7% to 20.7%). Absence in primary schools has risen from 4.4% to 12.4%.
Authorised absence across the week was 10.4% and by school type this was:
- 9.5% in state-funded primary schools
- 11.2% in state-funded secondary schools
- 16.9% in state-funded special schools
Unauthorised absence across the week was 4.0% and by school type this was:
- 2.9% in state-funded primary schools
- 5.4% in state-funded secondary schools
- 3.8% in state-funded special schools
Users should be aware of the following:
- Response rate - 76% of schools have opted-in to submitting data, therefore national figures are estimates. Across school types this was: 78% of state-funded primary schools, 71% of state-funded secondary schools and 66% of state-funded special schools.
- Estimates for non-response - In recognition that response rates are not equal across school types and, therefore, not representative of the total school population, the total rates for all schools has been weighted based on the Spring 2022 school census.
- Reporting lag - Schools update their registers continually and attendance codes change, resulting in absence rates for a particular day to decrease over time. Analysis of data from the Summer 2022 term suggests that this could be a decrease in the absence rate of around 1 percentage point before settling down. Historical figures will be recalculated in each publication.
If you are a school that has not yet signed up to share your data, please visit Share your daily school attendance data (opens in a new tab) for more information. This will also give you, your local authority and your multi-academy trust (if applicable) access to daily attendance reports (opens in a new tab) to help identify pupils needing attendance support earlier.